Last Sunday's thought: the Good Shepherd of one flock

We are pilgrims on a journey; and our Church is a pilgrim Church. The seven ‘I am’ statements of Jesus in John’s Gospel provide us as pilgrims with the essential, elementary needs for our journey. Food: I am the bread of life (John 6:35). Light: I am the light of the world (8:12). A path to follow: I am the Way, the truth and the life (14:6). A gate to get onto the path: I am the Gate for the sheep (10:7). An eternal journey: I am the Resurrection and the Life (11:25). A life that bears the fruit of that pilgrimage: I am the True Vine (15:1). Finally, and perhaps most important, someone trustworthy to follow: I am the Good Shepherd (10:11).

         In his farewell discourse, Jesus had prayed that the church should be one (John 17:21), just as his disciples should be one (John 17:11), ‘that the world may believe that you have sent me’ (John 17:21). The unity of the church, in spite of variations in traditions, is to be the supreme testimony to the truth of the claim that Jesus is God’s son and chosen emissary to his people on earth. In the words of this morning’s gospel, ‘So there will be one flock, one shepherd’.

         ‘God wills the Church, because he wills unity, and unity is an expression of the whole depth of his self-giving love (agape).’ These were John Paul II’s words in 1995 on the profound reasons underlying the move towards Christian unity. ‘…promoting Christian unity’, John Paul II affirmed, ‘is not just some sort of “appendix” which is added to the Church’s traditional activity. Rather, ecumenism is an organic part of her life and work, and consequently must pervade all that she is and does; it must be like the fruit borne by a healthy and flourishing tree which grows to its full stature.’

There is a powerful summary of ecumenical statements and agreements drawn together by Cardinal Walter Kasper under the title Harvesting The Fruits. Here are just a few important ideas drawn from these agreements. First (p. 65), that ‘the credibility of the Church’s witness in the world is undermined by the sins of its members, the shortcomings of its human institutions and not least by the scandal of division. The Church is in constant need of repentance and renewal so that it can be more clearly seen for what it is: the one, holy body of Christ.’

Second (pp. 72-3), ‘the concept of koinonia (communion)… is the term that most aptly expresses the mystery underlying the various NT images of the Church… Those who have received the same word of God and have been baptized in the same Spirit cannot, without disobedience, acquiesce in a state of separation.’ ‘Christian disunity obscures God’s invitation to communion for all humankind and makes the Gospel we proclaim harder to hear.’

A third point is that the mandate of bringing salvation to all is the task of the entire Christian church and not just one privileged part of it, ‘the true believers’. ‘The mandate given to the Church to bring salvation to all the nations constitutes its unique mission. In this way the Church not only signifies the new humanity willed by God and inaugurated by Christ. It is itself an instrument of the Holy Spirit in the extension of salvation to all human beings in all their needs and circumstances to the end of time’ (p. 59).

A fourth and final point concerns the need to clarify the purpose of talking together as Christians. Few of us expect to see our inherited confessional distinctions disappear any time soon, if ever. That is not the point. It is that such distinctions should no longer be the obstacle that they have been in the past: ‘there is unity in reconciled diversity’ (p. 89). ‘So there will be one flock, one shepherd.’ The command of Christian ecumenism could not be stated more clearly than in John 10:16.

THOUGHTS FROM LAST SUNDAY: FEEDING THE THOUSANDS IN OUR UNEQUAL WORLD

‘Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat”… all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.’ (Matt. 14: 16, 20). In John’s gospel, the miraculous feeding of the 5,000 is a prelude to Jesus’ words: ‘I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger…’ (John 6:35). In Matthew’s and especially Mark’s (Mark 8:19) accounts, there is greater emphasis on the symbolism of the baskets of leftovers. Twelve baskets in the case of the feeding of the 5,000 because the miracle took place on the western side of the river Jordan flowing into the sea of Galilee, where the population was predominantly Jewish: twelve baskets of leftovers symbolized Jesus’ ability to meet the needs of all twelve tribes of Israel. The feeding of the 4,000 took place on the eastern side of the river Jordan near Bethsaida, where there was a significant Gentile population: seven baskets of leftovers are thought to symbolize the seven tribes living in the land of Canaan when the people of Israel arrived (cf. Acts 13:19. These were the Amorites, Hittites, Perrizites, Canaanites, Girgashites, Hevites and Jebusites). Jesus could thus also feed the other nations if the people of Israel came to reject his message.

In our own time, the accounts of the feeding of such large numbers of people, and the scale of the leftovers, have a quite different symbolism. The gospel does not tell us what was done with the ‘leftovers’, but we may be sure that the produce was put to good use. Earlier cultures and societies were careful and prudent with their food supplies. In our own, affluent, western society, too often food is simply wasted: yet in eastern Africa, the peoples afflicted by the drought and resulting famine have nothing and are entirely dependent on food supplies provided by the international aid agencies which arrive often too late. Tristram Stuart, author of Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal, comments: ‘feeding the 5,000 barely even scratches the surface of th[is] nation’s profligacy. If you collected all the food wasted every day in the UK, it would provide lunch for 60 million people. The food wasted in rich North American and European countries would be enough to lift all the one billion malnourished people in the world out of hunger.’ We have a long way to go before Jesus’ command to ‘give them something to eat’ is realized in our unequal world.